Average parents follow the crowd. Intentional parents pursue the goal.

Academics

Just as we’ve grown accustomed to think that teaching revolves around desks and worksheets, we’ve also been conditioned to think that learning is limited to ages 1–18 (or perhaps 23, if you throw in a few years of college.) And even more limiting than that, learning takes place between 8:15AM and 3:15PM—more or less.

However, if you remember the Hebrew philosophy that intentional parenting is founded on—building a relationship, spending time with a person in order to learn from watching him and interacting with him—you will realize that learning happens twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week during a person’s whole lifetime.

Regardless of your schooling choice (public school, private school, home school), your goal, as an intentional parent, should be to cultivate within your child a love for learning. And probably the most potent way you can cultivate it is to model it in your own life. What are you interested in? What have you been trying to learn more about in your spare time? Share your enthusiasm with your child and encourage him to investigate areas that interest him. Support his efforts by supplying him with

real books,

real people, and

real life experiences to learn from.

How To

Check our blog for practical tips and how-to ideas. We wrote about giving your child the gift of Academics in these posts: